[68] The NED has not arrived at this explanation; it says: “Peer is not a phonetic development of pire, and cannot, so far as is at present known, be formally identified with that word”; “the verbs keek, peek, and peep are app. closely allied to each other. Kike and pike, as earlier forms of keek and peek, occur in Chaucer; pepe, peep is of later appearance.... The phonetic relations between the forms pike, peek, peak, are as yet unexplained.”
[69] See, for instance, the following strong expressions: “Une langue est sans cesse rongée et menacée de ruine par l’action des lois phonétiques, qui, livrées à elles-mêmes, opéreraient avec une régularité fatale et désagrégeraient le système grammatical.... Heureusement l’analogie (c’est ainsi qu’on désigne la tendance inconsciente à conserver ou recréer ce que les lois phonétiques menacent ou détruisent) a peu à peu effacé ces différences ... il s’agit d’une perpétuelle dégradation due aux changements phonétiques aveugles, et qui est toujours ou prévenue ou réparée par une réorganisation parallèle du système” (Bally, LV 44 f.).
[70] Some speakers will say [su·] in Susan, supreme, superstition, but will take care to pronounce [sju·] in suit, sue. Others are more consistent one way or the other.
[71] I.e. “With confused and indistinct articulation; also, with a husky or hoarse voice”—NED.
[72] Even in speaking a foreign language one may unconsciously apply phonetic correspondences; a countryman of mine thus told me that he once, in his anger at being charged an exorbitant price for something, exclaimed: “Das sind doch unblaue preise!”—coining in the hurry the word unblaue for the Danish ublu (shameless), because the negative prefix un- corresponds to Dan. u-, and au very often stands in German where Dan. has u (haus = hus, etc.). On hearing his own words, however, he immediately saw his mistake and burst out laughing.
[73] With regard to Lat. signum it should be noted that it is by others explained as coming from Lat. secare and as meaning a notch.
[74] It is, of course, impossible to say how great a proportion of the etymologies given in dictionaries should strictly be classed under each of the following heads: (1) certain, (2) probable, (3) possible, (4) improbable, (5) impossible—but I am afraid the first two classes would be the least numerous. Meillet (Gr 59) has some excellent remarks to the same effect; according to him, “pour une étymologie sûre, les dictionnaires en offrent plus de dix qui sont douteuses et dont, en appliquant une méthode rigoureuse, on ne saurait faire la preuve.”
[75] Westphalian also has hoppen ‘zurückweichen,’ ESt. 54. 88.
[76] Lewis Carrol’s ‘portmanteau words’ are, of course, famous.
[77] Speculation has been rife, but without any generally accepted results, as to the relation between plumbum and words for the same metal in cognate languages: Gr. molibos, molubdos and similar forms, Ir. luaide, E. lead (G. lot, ‘plummet, half an ounce’), Scand. bly, OSlav. olovo, OPruss. alwis; see Curtius, Prellwitz, Boisacq, Hirt Idg. 686, Schrader Sprachvergl. u. Urgesch., 3d. ed., ii. 1. 95; Herm. Möller, Sml. Glossar 87, says that molibos and plumbum are extensions of the root m-l ‘mollis esse’ and explains the difference between the initial sounds by referring to multum: comp. plus—certainly most ingenious, but not convincing. Some of these words may originally have been echo-words for the plumping plummet.